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Stocks held gains this morning, following the ADP figures' release. Much of the rally stems from stimulus hopes, though. (Image credit: Getty Images North America via @daylife)

Hiring at U.S. businesses continued at a modest pace last month, new figures from payroll provider ADP show. June's gains indicate that the labor market is healthier than supposed, but still seeing only a small pick-up in growth.

The U.S. added 163,000 new private jobs last month, a drop from last month's downwardly revised total of 172,000 new jobs. Economists expected an increase of 120,000 new jobs in the ADP report.

The service industry brought the bulk of the new jobs, adding 148,000 workers to payrolls. Small- and mid-size businesses drove the growth, adding 86% of new jobs. ADP reports.

Coming during a time of uncertainty and many negative economic indicators, any job growth should be chalked up as a positive, says Joel Prakken, Macroeconomic Advisers chairman. Still, it's far from the expansion needed to substantially lower the unemployment rate or fuel considerable economic growth. "We need numbers that are two to three times greater than this for months for in a row," Prakken says. "We're just sputtering along right now."

While this morning data's seems to suggest that the U.S. labor market is more robust than other signs indicate, ADP's figures have greatly deviated from government data. Last month, for example, ADP reported numbers that were double the government estimate of 80,000 jobs. A new set of government employment figures are due Friday morning.

So far this year, ADP has differed from the government report by an average of 50,000 jobs. A continuation of that trend would place the government figure near 100,000 on Friday and an unchanged unemployment rate of 8.2%, says Barclays economist Cooper Howes. That matches economists' expectations for Friday's figures.

Time Warner was off 0.1% to $39.12 on better-than-expected earnings. Spirit Airlines fell 6.3% to $20.16 after it said it would offer 9.4 million shares of common stock to the public that were owned by Oaktree Capital Management.